THE METAL PIT: I know the band was originally called “Ashes”. Can you give mea little history of how the band came together initially?

Pete Fury: It all started lots of years ago, when Bjoerkborg and Doc formed a band called Xaiphodius. Back then, it was all about plain heavy metal, but time went on, and Zeb joined that band as well. Finally,this current lineup got together when Doc studied the same music class as Pete. The band then changed name to Ashes, but when we got the record deal both we and the label wanted a new, more unique name. So, here we are!

On first listen to ‘Friend or Foe” the first power chord ringing out and bassline immediately brought Queensryche to mind. Can you tell me a bit about the bands collective influences?

 It’s true we’re influenced by Queensrÿche. But not exclusively. Everybody in the band listen to a variety of music. From everything and anything between ABBA to Meshuggah. We like to be quite open minded about music, but won’t settle with crappy music!

With the current status of the music industry (illegal downloading, file sharing), it seems like Malison Rogue has a strong buzz within the progessive/power metal community. How is the album selling?

Actually,we don’t know yet. We know a lot of people in the U.S. enjoys our album, as well as Germans, Italians and Greeks. We’re still waiting for our mid-year report, so ‘til then, we just hope more and more people discover us. It’s a tough business so we’re just happy that people like us and show up to our gigs for some headbanging action.



Doing a quick search on YouTube, I couldn’t find any video
clips of the band playing live. How often does Malison Rogue tour?

Well, we haven’t been on an actual tour yet. It’s quite hard to do that, and of course, it costs a great deal of money when you’re not yet established. We play some gigs here and there, building us a fanbase and hope to climb further and further. Sadly, it’s not easy these days to get gigs when you’re not established, but we keep on playing our asses off and having a great time doing it!

What are your current tour plans? Will you be doing any
festivals? Any plans on touring in the U.S.?

As to quote Swedish singer Meya: “It’s all ‘bout the money” haha. No, but really, touring costs a lot of money so at the moment we just focus on playing a lot of separate gigs and keep writing songs. Of course, we’d love to tour both the U.S., Japan and Europe. But we’ll take it one thing at a time.



Have you begun to thinkabout the next album? Are there any
songs written for it yet?

Definitely. Even though our songs are new to most of our fans, they’re old to us haha. So, we have a lot of new ideas and can’t wait ‘til it’s time for our next album.

Is there anything you would like to say to the metal fans who
read this interview that may not have heard of Malison Rogue yet?

First of all; Thanks for taking your time to read this interview! To all of you headbanging fans out there, we’re here to stay. Haven’t checked us out yet? Do it! You won’t be disappointed. ;)

 I wish you the best of luck with the band and I look forward to hearing
much more from Malison Rogue in the future!

 Thanks a lot! Be sure to check for our nextalbum for some more Swedish progressive Heavy Metal!